A funeral

Today I'll be attending the funeral of a friend of ours.  We met him through the preschool our kids attended together and I was the assistant coach on our sons' T-ball team that he sponsored and was the head coach for.  I have gone to many "Girls Night Out" evenings with his wife and our families tried many times, but unfortunately, only once were able to actually pull off a family bike ride together on a Saturday morning.

He was absolutely one of the nicest people I have ever met and his life was cut short in a horrible tragedy for which we still don't have any answers.  The viewing was last night at a funeral home and several people spoke about their memories of him.  Every single person talked about how infectious his love of humanity was and what an amazing gift he had for helping other people.

I've been trying to figure out what I can do to help his family get through this devastating event, but I know that his wife has been surrounded by her closest friends since it happened.  She is well-cared-for and she seemed to be holding up fairly well last night.

As we were leaving from the funeral home, I realized that it's going to be the help during the day-to-day living in the next few months and years that will be most useful to her and the kids as they try to accept this new reality.  And it made me really glad to be living where we do and to know that our tight-knit school community is ready and willing to help, just as he would have done if he were in our place.